Richard Koman, newsfactor
However, in the current version, the service offers upload speeds of just five Mbps, reflecting the inherent limits of cable Internet service.
A catch is that the monthly subscription fee is $150, compared to average fees of $50 a month for Comcast's regular Internet service. The new offering makes Comcast competitive with Verizon's FiOS network, which offer similar speeds at a similar price, company spokesperson Charlie Douglas said.
Intense Competition
At those prices, the service might appeal most to small businesses and high-volume movie downloaders. But such "comparatively meager" upload performance, together with the $150 monthly price tag, may dissuade small businesses from signing up, depending on the type of content the business provides, said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, in an e-mail.
Both Comcast's and Verizon's high-speed offerings "reflect the results of growing, intense competition between cable and phone companies for entertainment dollars, and the approaching deadline for switching from analog to digital television-broadcast signals," King said. "It's likely to be a banner year for digital/HDTV sales, and Comcast is hoping to attract as many customers as possible before they're wooed away by Verizon and others."
By the end of the year, Comcast said, it will have deployed the "wideband" network to 20 percent of its customers.
The BitTorrent Factor
But that may be wishful thinking. At a congressional hearing in March, Haruka Saito, a member of the Japanese Embassy staff, said Japan, with 100Mbps deployments, also is running into congestion problems due to P2P usage.
Comcast's commitment to reach 20 percent of its market with the new technology coincides with its promise to adopt new network-management technology by the end of 2008. "We're committed to changing our network-management processes from what they are today by the end of the year, and we just need time to work that all out," Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas said. "We're going to work not just with BitTorrent, but a lot of other P2P companies, the Internet Engineering Task Force, academics and others to get together and come up with a better way to manage the network."
While Comcast clearly would like to put the BitTorrent fiasco behind, "it's likely that the company's actions will be closely watched by supporters and opponents alike for a long time to come," King said.
Development Platform
The new network is based on DOCSIS 3.0, an acronym for Data Over Cable Systems Interface Specifications. DOCSIS 3.0 works by bundling together four channels, that would otherwise be used to deliver analog television, into essentially one big data pipe.
"This creates more choice and an additional tier of products for our customers in all our markets once it's deployed," said Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior vice president for high-speed Internet. "It's also a platform that application developers will take advantage of to build new innovative applications that can get the most out of the new technology."
"This announcement marks the beginning of the evolution from broadband to wideband," Bowling added. "We believe wideband will usher in a new era of speed and Internet innovation for today's digital consumers. Wideband is the future, and it's coming fast."
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